Tag Archives: magic wand

Life’s pendulum slowly begins to swing back to a quieter state. Only a smattering of art-related events left to attend to and soon the art work will come home to roost once again where it belongs. Well, most of it. Some small things have sold and will be finding their way to forever homes which feels like an accomplishment of sorts.

Last night, upon returning home myself from an evening of sharing a few tunes with my musical mates, the headlamps of my car alight upon a great buck who has come to pay us a visit. He is regal and quite stately, taking his time crossing the little bridge over our creek.

Today I look for evidence of his brief visit, as he is quite magical and a brain entranced by hours of music can often see things which are not of this world.

I find the evidence in what is left of our recent snow fall, a track across the bridge where my dogs stop to have a sniff of this wild creature’s path.

Playing around with ‘watercolor graphite’ I attempt to draw the buck.

In my drawing he is bulky and strange, but I find myself excited to use this medium which I purchased awhile back and have not yet used much.

Rustiness seems to be the name of the game lately as I have been presenting and exhibiting, showing and teaching, meeting and greeting. A dear friend of mine remarked at my last opening that he could see why I am not a fan of art openings in general (even the fun ones!) because it’s as if ‘you were just getting swallowed by people’. Which feels true.

I am eager to get back to the magic of making.

I have recommitted with a vengeance to the act of daily sketching and outings with our newly sanctioned Urban Sketchers of Cincinnati group are just the ticket to get the pen moving across the page once more.

Though it’s painfully crowded, I manage a warm up sketch at first.

And then a bit later, settle into a quieter place, with a more fantastical little structure to draw.

The rusty drawing skills begin to come to life and I feel the gears slowing down in my bones with pen to paper. It is strangely familiar and I am grateful for years of practice which don’t ever truly leave me.

I finish the sketch at home later that evening with a bit of color.

Our Urban Sketchers group is open to anyone who wants to get out and draw so do join us if you are in the area. I promise we are quite friendly and do not bite unless provoked.

This is a indeed a magical time of year. With the Solstice nearly upon us, in theory we begin to witness a return of light, though the world seems very dark indeed just now. To combat this darkness, we must make magic in our own way.

Over in the land of Twitter, writers Julia Bird and Robert MacFarlane have cooked up a plan for the internet to co-read the novel The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. We begin December 20th, the very same day the story begins, and I am excited to be a part of it. Reading a beautiful classic is a balm in these dire times.

I am inspired by dear friends who have been making magic in the world in very special ways. The first, someone I hike and paddle with, has a job in the world of retail where she knows how to line up deals and coupons to make things quite affordable. She uses this super-power to purchase new coats for those in need to donate to the coat drive at a local charity. This is especially wonderful for the rough and tumble little boys who are so very hard on their coats and therefore gently used coats are few and far-between. I marvel at her spirit of generosity and urge others good at shopping in the world to consider doing something similar.

Another friend has been crafting and conjuring magic in his own way and a few of us closest to him have been presented with a wondrous gift indeed.

A wand. I have other wands. Those with paint-brush tips. But this is a whole new animal indeed. It is a branch of elm, sanded and shaped and bedecked with a gorgeous calligraphy nib for writing and drawing….

It makes lines like a dream. At the other end of this wonderful wand is a little reminder of where my heart lies…

I am truly blessed to know people who play music, make art, walk ever so gently in this world. I aim to be one of them.

Meanwhile, unbelievably (inconceivable?)

It has been 10 years of making magic here in this little online world of mine.

“Creativity is really the structuring of Magic.”

~ anne kent rush

This anniversary time feels momentous. Seismic in its shifting of my work and my thinking and life in general. I look back on the woman who started this blog ten years ago and I know that I have grown and changed.

Around the same time as this blog was getting going, I got my very first tattoo. A moth, rooted. That tattoo has served me well for many years and the symbolism still resonates with me to this day. That said, it had faded a bit and had grown a little tired. When my daughter (now about to turn 21 which here in this country means one is a fully fledged adult) suggests we get tattoos together, I decide to use this opportunity to reinvest in the moth design.

Her idea is to get ferns, each in our own way, to our own liking. Ferns are all about unfurling into one’s true majesty, which I think we both are doing just now as human beings.

She knew right away what she wanted and so, she goes first.

Simple, graphic, hipster. Very her. We both love it.

A few weeks on I come to the idea of reworking my moth and proceed to Flying Tiger Tattoo where my friend and fellow artist Megan Butler works. She comes up with a way to reinvigorate my beloved luna moth, while incorporating the ferns. She also nurtures the root ball of the design, adding in mushrooms to aid this forest inspired work of art, brightening and delineating the roots, giving them room to breathe. I simply could not be happier with it.

It is earthy, bright and beautiful. Colorful and confident. No longer fading. It is more cohesive than the original, more well thought out. It may yet be added to. It is a rich environment for new growth to occur.

All of these things feel applicable to myself just now. Which as I look back on this time last year, fills me with a relief I cherish. This season finds me filled with so much less anxiety and depression, having worked exceptionally hard to shift back into a yoga routine, once again going back to eating vegetarian. Self care and overall health are great gifts indeed. They add to the magic making, at least around here.

And speaking of magic, here are a few more tidbits to share.

Magic in the littlest moments. Noticing. Placing attention on these things….

One of my all time favorite characters in any book is Tiffany Aching. She is a young witch, who is, among other things, “good with cheese.” I like to think she’d be rather proud of my first foray into making cheese. This time, a simple paneer.

And lastly, I leave you with my efforts from the month of October. At the last minute, I opted to take part in “inktober”, putting together an alphabet of creatures as a way to get to know my new fountain pen. It was great fun and I hope to have sets of post cards to share with you in time for the holidays. Prints of individual animals are also available.

*special thanks to my dear and wonderful friend who has allowed me to use her music in my videos over the years. Kim Taylor, you are the very vision of friendship. I love you.

It all started with this image from my friend Zach Sawan. (who is really a friend of a friend but we’ve hit it off, what with being fans of paint, magic and maybe a little mayhem and moonlight.) Young artists like Zach give me great hope for the world to come as I grow older…that there are old (yet young) souls among us who may give their youthful energy to the task at hand of keeping the flame of creativity aglow in this world. You can see a little more of what he’s currently up to here.

He shared the above photograph at his instagram page and I was instantly captivated. He had created A Magic Wand.

“I have to make one of these!!!” I cried. And of course, Zach replied “It’s so necessary.”

And it IS necessary. This spring we are grieving the loss of many trees from our green space who have lost their battle with the Emerald Ash Borer beetle. We now have a new landscape to contend with and I am wandering around attempting to figure it all out….

A long, long, (LONG) time ago, I began this blog. Not sure where it would take me. And it pretty much began with this image:

This tree which we so adore, anchoring the back bit of our little slice of the world. The Grandfather Ash.

Well, sadly, it too has fallen to the combined efforts of age and the emerald ash borer and sometime soon, it will be coming down, in spite of our best efforts to shore it up and keep it going.

We love this tree and all it has given us. With a few near misses of HUGE dropped limbs during storms, we have known the end was near for a while now.

But back to the Magic Wand…. I wandered around the yard picking up some sticks here and there which might fit the little brushy end I had laying around awaiting such a task as becoming The Magic Wand….

And I soon made my way around back to where Grandfather Ash still stands. He had loads of sticks to offer. Many of them not as brittle as you’d think, being like ‘real wood’, not just crackly old stick which might belong in a campfire.

And I chose one.

I whittled and worked it into place, eventually coming up with my own Magic Wand. We all have tools that help us be who we are really meant to be. Perhaps a healer has a hand that can sense a fever, or a stethoscope which magnifies the beating of a damaged heart (just another form of worldly magic, I say), or a builder with a sense of angles and slide-ruler style tools to make them all work. The pastry chef with his or her French rolling pin to make things just so for pie, or the proper chef’s knife to create that which nourishes. We all have our tools. For me, the paintbrush is that tool. And today I outfitted one of my brushes to be a little different than the rest.